flamingsword | Network

I'm home for Christmas and the New Year, hurrah. I've drunk a lot of tea, there have been mince pies, I've spent nice time with the nieces. I also had the peak "Irish village at the holidays" experience of having to make small talk for a few minutes with a man whose wife is—known to even far-flung diaspora members like myself, but unknown to him—having an open affair with the parish priest. This is the kind of wholesome experience that you just don't get in other places.

( Generation Kill )

( Heated Rivalry )

troisoiseaux

Finished I Leap Over the Wall: Contrasts and Impressions After Twenty-Eight Years in a Convent by Monica Baldwin, a 1949 memoir that is what it says on the tin and a fascinating read. It's a mix of explaining convent life to a secular audience (which was pretty much the same as in Catherine Coldstream's Cloistered, although I feel like Baldwin made more of an effort to explain why this or that aspect of life as a nun made sense in the context of Catholic doctrine), Baldwin's sense of culture shock from having entered the cloister in 1914 and left it in 1941, and her misadventures in adjusting to the modern world circa WWII— she worked various jobs in an effort to Do Her Bit for Britain, including as an unofficial Land Girl, dormitory matron at a munitions factory, hostess at an army canteen, assistant librarian at the Royal Academy of Science, and something for the War Office that she isn't allowed to talk about. (She was also the niece of former Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, which probably helped.) It's also a thoughtful, insightful memoir about a woman figuring out who she is as a person after nearly three decades of suppressing every instinct towards individualism; in a way, it reads a lot like someone recovering from a long-term abusive relationship— there was one particularly aching line about the first time she "had actually dared to open a window, in a place containing several other people, and the universe had NOT rocked to its foundations and then come toppling down about my ears"— although, as it's all written in such a bright tone and Baldwin's view was clearly that she personally was unsuited for religious life, rather than religious life in itself being The Problem, I imagine that she would have been surprised by the comparison.

Also finished my fourth(?) re-read of Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, just under the wire for 2025. I don't have any new thoughts this time— no, actually, I have one: ( ... )— but I continue to enjoy this series so so much and will cheerfully re-read it on loop until Alecto gets published and/or the rest of my life, whichever comes first, even at my current snail's pace of three years to finish three books (having last read Gideon in 2023 and Harrow in 2024).

ysabetwordsmith posting in

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Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith posting in

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Current Mood: busy

dine

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ruric

I've had a very restful break (last day at work was 18 Dec). Up to today I've lolled around, watched tons of TV, visited with

ravurian on Christmas day and done some gentle cleaning and decluttering.

HOME: more or less maintained tidy kitchen, bathroom, hall, landing, stairs which is a win.

HEALTH: pretty good!

LIFE ADMIN: not done much on this the last 2 weeks.

DIGITAL DECLUTTER: email is back up to 11,500, phone images desperately need sorting BUT I did archived a lot of stuff off my tablet on Xmas Day so that's a win!

GARDENING/ALLOTMENTING: still haven't done the living room windows boxes or been down to the allotment.

COOKING/EATING: I have eaten all the things and have a fridge mostly full of healthy food.

READING/LISTENING: nope.

WATCHING:i think there's something a bit "Emperor's new clothes" about Pluribus so many people have raved about it but I find it boring. Still liking the newest iteration of Robin Hood. Have continued watching random detective shows on Acorn but think the time is approaching too cancel my subscription for a while. I'm a season or two behind on Stranger Things and haven't started Heated Rivalry.

CREATING/LEARNING: still going to crochet club. Have almost finished another blanket, plan to finish off my original granny square and Halloween blankets in January and then will be starting on the utterly mad Boho blanket.

CATS: all good.

VOLUNTEERING: we've had an Xmas break.

SOCIALISING: on 15 December met up with I (who had a spare ticket) and saw an interesting production of Twelfth Night at the National - Sam West as Malvolio. Christmas Day was spent with

ravurian eating good food, having a long catch up and, in my case, napping through Strictly!

WORK: none since 19 December and I really, really needed the break!

This coming week will be busy as I do ALL the things I haven't yet done including any epic pile of laundry!

apod_feed

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap251228.html

Jewels don't shine this bright -- only stars do.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap251228.html

sonia

2025 but pictured in gingerbread. Amazing art.

dewline

Ottawa City Hall has declared a Significant Weather Event tonight.

Current Mood: nervous
Current Location: Home-for-now
Current Music: CBC News' Front Burner on YouTube

yourlibrarian posting in

common_nature

3 for the Memories' 2025 session will be open for posts on January 3, 2026 and will run for 3 weeks until January 24. Event participation is as follows:

1) Three photos only per person during each annual session. Members are encouraged to discuss the reason for their choices.

2) Photos can be hosted at Dreamwidth or elsewhere, and should not be larger than 800 px width or height.

3) All three photos should be in the same post. Cut tags should be placed after the first photo.

3 for the Memories is not a competition, and entries are not being judged. Rather, participants are encouraged to share photos they took in 2025 that they find meaningful in some way or which represent how they experienced the year.

Questions? Visit the announcement post at

threeforthememories

jesse_the_k

In the News

Why some people are devoted to particular aspects of popular culture is a fundamental query in fan studies research. One common and familiar answer is that fandoms are like religions. A recent article offers a different approach to understanding the emotional intensity of fan devotion, suggesting that while fans often describe their devotion in terms that sound religious, this comparison “has some lingering issues that hamper the field.” The authors contend that we can compare specific elements of fan experience (e.g., rituals, symbols, shared practices, and collective identity) to “sacred experiences” without needing to imply that fandoms are literal religions.

We believe it is more accurate to conceptualize fan devotion as part of a broader landscape of sacred activities that transcend the concept of religion.

Elliott and Mowers assert that their results provide powerful evidence that many fans experience their interests as sacred.

Their interests occupy a unique and special place in their lives: They derive purpose and inspiration from them, they learn important values from them, they involve something powerful and important, and they inspire them to believe in something larger than themselves.

To support this claim, the researchers analyzed information gathered from surveys, interviews, and fan experiences at Comic Cons and identified a new framework for determining what makes fan experiences sacred-like. They argue that by studying and measuring these “sacred dimensions,” especially in contexts like conventions where fan devotion takes on almost ritual-like patterns, scholars can reevaluate the religion metaphor, focusing instead on analytic models that consider the complexity of fan experience. Through this process, researchers can better understand fan devotion and how fandom is shaped by this collective identity. This analysis helps frame fandom as a cultural practice with emotional, symbolic, and communal depth.

Reports from fan conventions across the globe reinforce the idea that physical gatherings become collective spaces where fans create meaning through shared experiences. In one example, recent reporting on Bengaluru Comic Con highlights the convergence of more than 50,000 fans gathering to celebrate their shared love for fandom. A Times of India article describes fans coming together in a vibrant pop culture playground: cosplaying, celebrating shared passions, and building community through creative expression. “For many attendees, Comic Con was as much about community as it was about pop culture.” In another report, Shefali Johnson, CEO of Comic Con India, explains how the fans are what make Bengaluru Comic Con so special: “People here come to listen, learn, connect and experience.” A story in the Deccan Herald describes the con as “a living mosaic of fandom,” where participation is an act of joy:

For many, the message was simple: this space belongs to everyone, regardless of age, fandom, or experience.

Events like these allow fans from all over the world to connect and share their passions, creating new sacred experiences together and building a strong collective identity.

OTW Tips

Transformative Works and Cultures, a project of the OTW, is an international, peer-reviewed academic journal that seeks to promote scholarship on fanworks and practices. The journal is published at least twice each year and invites submissions of papers in all areas. For more information, visit the TWC website.

Did you know the OTW attends fan conventions? Our volunteers represent the OTW at cons around the world. The OTW’s Con Outreach team, a division of the Communications committee, coordinated attendance at 10 gatherings across three continents in 2025, meeting fans and sharing games, gifts, fic prompts, and of course, our popular rec board, where everyone is invited to take a fic rec and leave one of their own. Our volunteers love to talk about fandom, so come see us and say hello!

Would you like to see the OTW at your local fan convention event? Contact our Communications committee and let us know!

We want your suggestions for the next OTW Signal post! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or news story you think we should know about, send us a link. We are looking for content in all languages! Submitting a link doesn’t guarantee that it will be included in an OTW post, and inclusion of a link doesn’t mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/otw-signal-december-2025/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=274344

runpunkrun posting in

gluten_free

Hey gang. I've added a !: yeast-free tag to the comm.

I went through and added it to any relevant posts in the bread tag, since that's where it'll be of most use. But going forward, if your post is yeast-free, please tag it as such.

So, in the future, if you want to find things that are free of yeast, for best results you'll probably want to filter through two tags, such as !: yeast-free and task: baking or, narrow it down even further with !: yeast-free and meal: bread. The bread tag contains breads, flat breads, quick breads, biscuits, wraps, and crackers, and is mainly where you're going to find yeast or the notable lack thereof.

The technique is a bit fiddly because you have to create the URL yourself, but you can always browse the intersection of two tags in a journal by manually typing in a URL in this format: https://user.dreamwidth.org/tag/tag1,tag2?mode=and

That'll give you all posts in user's journal that are tagged with both things.

Or, you can browse a combination of two tags: https://user.dreamwidth.org/tag/tag1,tag2?mode=or

That will give you all of user's posts that are tagged with tag1 OR tag2. In effect, all posts with tag1, plus all posts with tag2. So say you want to see all of our posts tagged meal: bread OR meal: dessert all at once, or diet: vegan-friendly OR !: dairy-free.

You'll need to reproduce the tags exactly, including spaces and punctuation. Here's a list of the comm's tags. They're hierarchical, which means they belong to groups and all start with a category, which is followed by a colon and then a space: like "meal: " or "content: " or "!: " which is our "free-from" category and where you can find our newest tag: !: yeast-free.

And because I, for one, can never remember how to make this work, here's a link to the Dreamwidth FAQ explaining how to use AND and OR with tags.

kormantic

I have been twice gifted this Yule!

For Yuletide, I got a Cassie-as-Lexie Undercover story, fizzy and clever and full of the rush that is improv with a metaphorical gun to your head, featuring Frank as a Pretend Boyfriend!!

never learned the knack (4079 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Dublin Murder Squad Series - Tana French
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Cassie Maddox, Frank Mackey (Dublin Murder Squad)
Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Undercover as a Couple
Summary:

“Lexie, who was that guy you were with at the supermarket? You know. The older one?”

I laughed, Lexie’s first instinctual response to anything I needed a second to think about. Shit. Me and Frank had moved our debriefs off of park benches after we nearly got caught by a classmate; turns out pretending to be strangers who happened to be contemplating the same row of crisps at Tesco wasn’t a good choice either. What the fuck had Anna been doing there? Most of Lexie’s friends lived off takeaway and speed, and barely ever set foot in a supermarket if they could help it.

“Well, what do you think?” I asked, nose in the air, my own smile creeping in at the edges, like I was the one with a secret, and actually, I was pleased enough to share. Delighted, even. “He’s my fella, duh.”

For Fandom Trumps Hate, I got Eames needing a favor, and that need is for Arthur to be... a Pretend Boyfriend!!

This atmospheric and funny work has posted 2 chapters out of 5 for the (already completed) story and I can't wait for the next chapter!!

labyrinthine (9678 words) by missing_fawkes
Chapters: 2/5
Fandom: Inception (2010)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Characters: Arthur (Inception), Eames (Inception)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, art heist, Crimes & Criminals, Getting Together, Pining, Partners in Crime, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Theft, POV Arthur (Inception)
Summary:

"It’s not that big of a deal, I mean it, darling. It’s not dangerous and nothing dramatic is going to happen."

Eames calls in a favour. Fake dating, chaos and a spontaneous heist ensue.

I haven't had any time to dive into Yuletide yet otherwise, so I look forward to reading so many gorgeous things in a thousand different fandoms! If you've got recs, I'd love to see them in the comments. :D

Current Mood: ecstatic
Current Location: by the tree

troisoiseaux

2025 has been a fabulous year for Batshit British Crime Thrillers: shows that can be best described as why must TV be good? Is it not enough to watch a haggardly hot, grumpy British guy have a really bad week?, with a tidy 6-8 episodes, really good actors, and wildly implausible plots.

Dept. Q stars Matthew Goode as DCI Carl Morck, an acerbic police detective in Scotland reassigned to investigate cold cases with a misfit team while recovering from physical and emotional trauma. The plot is completely bonkers and impossible to talk about without major spoilers, because the first episode ends with the reveal of what happened to ambitious prosecutor Merritt Lingard, whose disappearance Morck and co. are investigating: ( ... ) There's also definitely a vibe of maybe the real mystery was the friends we made along the way; the fact it closes with an instrumental cover of Radical Face's "Welcome Home, Son" really captures the emotional tone. So, yeah, 10/10, had a great time watching this.

Lazarus stars Sam Claflin as Dr. Joel "Laz" Lazarus, a forensic psychologist who is either having a mental breakdown in the wake of his father's apparent suicide and unresolved grief over his twin sister's unsolved murder twenty years earlier, or is being haunted by the ghosts of cold-case victims from his home town, leading him to investigate their deaths and whether they were related to his father's and sister's. ( Spoilers! ) This show is, objectively, not very good - it ends with multiple twists so stupid I did laugh out loud - but I actually really enjoyed the timey-wimey-ness of it, between the concept of flashback-based hauntings - the ghosts, when they appear to Laz, seem to think they are a. alive and b. having therapy sessions with Laz's father - and the way the show cuts between the characters as adults in the present day and the teenagers they'd been when Laz's sister was murdered. The big names in the cast are, of course, Claflin, and Bill Nighy as the late Dr. Lazarus Sr., but I was delighted to see Edward Hogg as the twitchy town loner who has lived under suspicion of Laz's sister's murder for decades, and David Fynn - who I've mostly seen as the goofier characters in Shakespearean comedies - in a more serious role as Laz's childhood friend, now a local police detective; I was unfamiliar with Alexandra Roach, who stole the show as Laz's wounded, woo-woo surviving sister.

Black Doves is technically stretching the definition a bit, as it's from 2024 and more of a spy thriller, co-starring Keira Knightley as a spy ten years' deep into her cover as the wife of a rising politician and Ben Whishaw as an assassin with a broken heart; I'd procrastinated on watching this for a full year, which actually meant I watched it at the best possible time (i.e., last week, over Christmas) because it is specifically set at Christmas. (Move over, Die Hard!) Absolutely spaghetti-at-the-wall plot - it's conspiracies all the way down, ( vague spoilers ) - and everyone in it is, like, so bad at the first rule of Being A Spy (don't freaking tell people you're a spy!!!) but both Knightley and Whishaw act the hell out of their roles and the writing is fun and there were a bunch of other great characters, including the incomparable Kathryn Hunter as a London crime boss and a delightful pair of snarky zillennial hitwomen.

glinda

It's the end of the year, and I’ve got time for one last album for this challenge.

In a year when it felt like everyone in my age bracket was obsessed with Oasis going back on tour, the equivalent band for me, Pulp, released a new album and went out on tour. (I was 11 going on 12 when I first heard Disco 2000, it was on a funny shaped sample CD that my dad got as a freebie somewhere, he brought it home, handed it to me and said ‘you’re going to love that one’ and I was hugely annoyed he was right. Different Class was the album that defined my teen years - it rewired something in my brain.) I’m mostly glad I didn’t try and get tickets after all, the surprisingly large number of clips of their Glasgow gig, were up in the gods of the Hydro which is realistically where I’d have ended up and overall if I couldn’t have been down on the floor, I was just as well just watching their ‘surprise’ Glastonbury gig. (It was the 30th anniversary of their classic Glasto performance when they were at the height of their fame.) I really loved both the singles they released from it - I was doing a lot of driving for work, and despite how much 6Music over played them both, I never got sick of either track - and the new bits I heard on the Glasto set so I fully intended to pick up a copy of the album - More. I just never got round to it, until the end of November when I was looking for a pick me up in HMV and spotted a ‘colour’ vinyl edition in the twofer deal - I got Air’s Moon Safari an album I’ve loved for years, but only ever had it ripped from an friend’s copy - and knew that was exactly what I needed.

(And because Pulp absolutely know their audience, particularly for the vinyl edition, there's an insert with both production details and all the lyrics - seriously bands underestimate how much added value having the lyrics provides. Also I got the 'green' vinyl addition and it's just a gorgeous shade of bottle green which makes a gorgeous contrast with the orange on the central label. Just nice simple design. When Jarvis and Candida from the band were interviewed by Jo Whiley after the Glastonbury gig, Candida noted that when they’d all got together to rehearse they’d felt excited to make music together again for the first time in ages and I think you can tell, it really feels like an album made by a band enjoying making music together. I mean they’ve been a band together for longer than my entire life, when they released their breakout album His and Hers in 1994 they’d been going for like 16 years! It’s nice to think they just get back together every so often because it’s still fun to make music together.)

It was a great choice. Got to Have Love and Spike Island are still clearly the stand out tracks - classic Pulp tracks - but listening to it on vinyl, just letting it play while I was doing other things was a great way to let the rest of the album soak into my brain. Tracks I’d probably have skipped over in digital format, or even just on CD for being a bit blah, have settled into my brain and become favourites. It’s such a middle-aged album and I love it, just listening to Jarvis’ wry dead-pan commentary on life and love, that mixture of cynicism and hopefulness that is their trademark, is soothing to me. The stripped back beauty of some tracks versus the lush production of tracks like The Hymn of the North an album that reminds me why I still love this band so much. I was going to pick out my favourite tracks to talk about - Grown ups and Background Noise - but the more I listen to the album the more I fall in love with it all the tracks. It’s not often that one of your favourite bands from your teens gets back together and makes one of their best albums - I’ve been lucky Skunk Anansie came back with a banger in the form of Black Traffic but that was 2013, I think, it doesn’t happen a lot - and I’m so glad they did.

Current Mood: chipper
Current Music: Pulp - Grown Ups